Search engine optimization is a complex art form that is often confusing to people that have no experience in the matter. There are so many methods that the search engines use to index and rank web pages that it can be utterly impossible to perfect search engine optimization fully. However, there are techniques used that simplify that task of building backlinks (a crucial aspect of SEO). Backlinks are the backbone of any web site’s popularity and search engine ranking. A backlink is simply a link that points to your web site. The more links there are posted on the internet that link to one of your web pages, the more popular your site appears to be in the eye’s of the search engines that index every link online.

Social Networking and Links

Social networking has changed the way links are used on the internet, because links are no longer only posted by web site owners. Now, utilizing sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube, people are posting links to a variety of web pages so that their friends, family, and anyone else interested can find the useful content on that page, whether it be media or an interesting article. It is estimated that social networking and social media has increased the amount of links on the internet by more than a third. With these facts in mind it is easy to see why people are now employing backlink building methods that are designed to go viral through social media and social networking.

DoFollow and NoFollow

When search engines index web pages they also index the links on those pages, and depending on whether or not the link has a nofollow attribute, the search engine bot will actually click the link and index the page that it is brought to. If the link is a dofollow link then the search engine will index every aspect of the page and the link, transferring what is known in SEO as “link juice”” to the site that is being linked to. If the link is nofollow then that means the search engine will count the link as a backlink to the specified page but it will not always follow the link and index the subsequent page. The best kind of backlinks to have are dofollow.

Social Profiles and Backlinks

Social networking sites are often called web 2.0 sites, because they give everyone the opportunity to have their own little slice of the internet; their own web page. When you create a page on a site that has a high PR or a high amount of backlinks, any links that you put on that page will instantly be given more “link juice” by the search engines. When you create a Twitter account, you are given a Twitter URL, which is basically a web page.

Although Twitter uses a link shortener to prevent anchor texted links, there are hundreds of other social sites that have a decent PR and allow you to create profile pages for backlinks. In fact, identi.ca used to give members a profile page that had a PR of 6! With this kind of PR, any link that you post towards your  site on that profile page will instantly absorb some of the PR of the PR6 page. Perhaps even more beneficial, the links were dofollow. This is just one example of how high quality backlinks can be built through social networking and social profiles.

While many countries across the globe speak the English language, the extent of understanding may still be low. Since there are a limited number of online customers for each language, it’s important to fluently portray the product or service in their native tongue.

It’s a fact that the majority of consumers will not purchase a product from a website if they’re unable to understand the goods in their native language. Consequently it’s important to offer the world’s most used languages on a website. The top languages by number of speakers include:

• English
• Spanish
• Mandarin Chinese
• Hindi/Urdu
• Arabic

Keyword targeting with these languages can prove to be quite difficult since they are all in different language families. To optimize for global traffic, there are a few tips that can assist internet marketers. These include:

• Use human translators
• Mimic other local sites
• Carefully select keywords
• Test those keywords

Utilizing human translators to convert or check the content for accuracy is vital for targeting different countries. Although there are automated translation services available, sentences may not flow properly with awkward sentence structure and grammar.

By mimicking other sites local to that country, it can give you a feel for the native culture. Also, selecting localized top level domains for each country will create a comfortable environment for those buyers and instill confidence. For multi-country sites, it’s advantageous to model the website after well-established global sites like Amazon.

Additionally, keyword selection is crucial so that the proper clientele is attracted. This entails well-researched words for each target market. Although there is often an overlap between languages with popular keywords, the actual dictionary translation may be different. Also, entering distinctive phrases into local search engines can help add to your keyword repertoire.

Finally, test these keyword selections in pay-per-click advertising campaigns by setting a small monthly budget and viewing which keywords brought the most click-throughs. This is a good indication of what customers will be searching for so that your websites can be optimized for those searches.

There are many aspects to search engine optimization and internet marketing. Targeting global customers adds more requirements to the mix. By following the above tips, you can easily create a well optimized website that’s appealing to the global community. Translators, following local sites and the proper selection and testing of keywords can result in a profitable global business that relates to many customers across worldwide.

There is a large debate in the search engine optimization (SEO) community whether utilizing automated directory submissions to distribute articles and web pages across the internet is beneficial. While this debate is continuing, more automated submitter software is being developed and released.

How Do These Work?

Automated directory submission software takes your login information on many (sometimes into the thousands) social bookmarking or article directory sites and logs you in. It directly routes to the submission page and submits an article, blog post or whole web page to that site.

Is This Advantageous

Although most of these websites frown upon their use, they are quite handy and beneficial. It saves hours of time from having to manually input these articles and web pages into another website. It saves further time by signing you up to the site all at once. With thousands of social bookmarking and article directory sites, it can literally take days to submit one article to each.

The articles and web page submissions give you more exposure across the internet through backlinks as well as users simply reading what you have to say. This will entice more individuals to visit your site which could lead to higher sales and conversions (if you have advertisements).

The Consequences of its Use

Since most bookmarking and article directory sites frown upon its use, they will terminate your account with them if they discover this is submission method is being used. Some even employ bots to verify this wasn’t added by an automated article submitter. Also the Google indexing bots could get suspicious if an article or web page is suddenly submitted to hundreds of sites at once. This could affect your PageRank and in turn, traffic.

The SEO Community

The SEO community is torn on the use of this type of software. On the one hand, users believe it gives them more time to improve on their articles and focus on high-quality content. Others believe that manual submissions provide higher-quality backlinks which can improve your Google PageRank score.

While there is a major debate as to the benefit of utilizing these sites, the wheel continues to turn. New contributors to the internet find it difficult to manually submit to so many directories so they turn to these automated programs, thus creating a market. As technology helps everything become more automated, perhaps these directory submitters will be built into websites.

One of the most beneficial hosting accounts you can purchase is a reseller hosting plan. Reseller hosting is perfect for the expanding online business, as it lets you create separate hosting accounts that can be spread out amongst your clientele. You can use these hosting accounts to generate residual income on a monthly basis, or you can use them to acquire separate IP addresses for each of your websites, which can help you interlink your sites for a greater search engine ranking. Many people don’t realize all of the various uses for reseller hosting, as they see it as simply an opportunity to become a hosting provider, rather than an opportunity to have access to more flexible server resources.

SEO and Reseller Hosting

One of the most important aspects of running an online storefront is search engine optimization. After all what good is having an online store if no one can find your products or services. The best way to build up your search engine ranking is to build links. Building links means building up a large number of backlinks on the web that point back to your site, and these links give your page a higher PR. The more links you have coming form high PR pages, the higher your PR is going to be. Unfortunately, you can’t just set up a plethoraof web pages on the same IP address and link them back to each other, as Google will see this as spam. Instead you need multiple IP addresses, which a reseller hosting account can provide.

Reselling vs Hording

With reseller hosting you have two options. You can split up the server resources into segments and sell them, or you can horde these resources for yourself. Reseller hosting plans generally offer a good value in comparison to other hosting plans, however there are some hidden advantages that are specifically designed to help you sell your hosting plans. For example, there are tools that help you customize your CMS or control panel, which gives your hosting brand a professional and independent appearance. Selling reseller hosting plans is all about making your site and hosting company look as self-sufficient and professional as possible.

The Advantages of Reseller Hosting With eCommerce

As mentioned, you can use reseller hosting to improve your search engine rankings and you can also use it to generate a substantial residual monthly income. However you can also use reseller hosting to host your eCommerce sites, which is especially beneficial if you’re selling web-based services such as web design. You can add the fact that you are hosting your own sites on your own hosting accounts as an added selling point for your hosting customer. You can even offer free trials of your hosting service through your eCommerce site, by letting people set up blogs on your site with platforms like WordPress MU. Anything that you can do to boost sales, and represent your web hosting reselling company professionally will help you generate residual income in the long run.

Many people don’t understand the impact their web hosting account has on their search engine optimization efforts. While a web hosting account may seem as if it does nothing more than broadcast your site to the world, the internal workings of the hosting account actually have a great affect on your link building efforts. Link building is perhaps the most important aspect of search engine optimization, as it directly defines your website’s online presence. The more links that point back to your site, the more popular your site will appear to be to the search engines.

Self Link Building

Instead of waiting for others to give you backlinks, you have the option of building your own online link empire. While there are many tools that can help you accomplish this, there are only a few ways that will actually let you do this legitimately without significant repercussions from the search engines. Search engines understand the link building game better than anyone, and the only kind of links that really give your site a boost in the SERPs are links that are hosted on established and relevant sites in your niche. This means that building a link empire by yourself is somewhat difficult because you must have access to a lot of relevant domains. However it can be done by using free web hosting accounts.

Free Web Hosting and Web 2.0 Properties

When I say “Free Web Hosting” I am not referring to the type of web hosting accounts that give you a tiny amount of resources and a shared IP address. These web hosting accounts are practically useless for search engine optimization. Instead, I am referring to sites that will let you create free blogs and min-sites without paying for their hosting services, such as Blogger or Blogspot. With these mini-sites, you can build a backlinking empire within 6 months to a year, by filling each mini-site with relevant and useful content in your niche.

Diversification and SEO

Link building is all about diversification. You need to have your site’s link posted on as many websites as possible, to establish solid web presence. Fortunately, there are hundreds of free blogging sites that you can use to link back to your main site and create a substantial link network for free. These sites are already highly ranked in the search engines, and there a hundreds of them to choose from. You could easily outsource the creation and content creation of these blogs, and within a few months you would have a massive network of blogs that you could use to link to your main websites within a niche.

Conclusion

While the cliche saying is “You get what you pay for” this does not hold true for every concept. In  this case free web hosting could prove to be very beneficial, especially if you have access to hundreds of blogs that are under your control within a particular niche. Imagine having all of this power for free, with only the cost of the content creation being necessary.